In this chapter, we took an extensive tour of the motivations for, and use cases of, data caches in a distributed network application. We started by exploring some common business and design problems that would likely reap the benefits of a caching strategy. In doing so, we identified some of the basic considerations you can make when determining if the complexity of introducing a cache management system is the right decision for your application. Then, we looked at exactly which benefits could be gained from caching, and precisely how caching can provide them.
Once we learned why we might use a cache, we looked at some of the common problems that must be solved for when implementing a cache. First, we tackled the tactics of pre-caching data and caching results on demand. Then, we looked at how to determine which data or resources should be cache. We learned about establishing...